Yabba Dabba Doo? You betcha. The pork shoulder at Acorn is pure paleo, in a most excellent way. (Kristen Browning-Blas)

The scene at The Source Tuesday afternoon must have pleased developers Zeppelin Places – diners jammed the taqueria Comida, shoppers browsed the cheese and provisions shop Mondo Market, business owners fussed over their soon-to-open spaces, visitors gawked, and workers swarmed the interior of the old steel foundry, running saws and hammering and putting things into place. The food and drink emporium (3350 Brighton Blvd.) just six months ago little more than a vision (one that, to some eyes, might verge on hallucination), had gained color and definition and energy – the golem had risen.

At Acorn, the sister restaurant to Oak at Fourteenth in Boulder, owners Bryan Dayton and Steve Redzikowski worked with staffers to get everything into place for the opening, which if all goes as planned will happen on Sunday. The joint will serve just dinner for a few weeks, but lunch is anticipated sometime in the fall.

Acorn will serve the same kind of food as Oak at Fourteenth – “wood-fired seasonal cooking,” said the mohawked Redzikowski on Tuesday – but the menu and approach will differ a bit. Oak at Fourteenth shakes hands with shared plates, but it’s more like a tight embrace at Acorn, where most of the board – about 70 percent – revolves around shared things, from smaller plates of dishes like shrimp and grits to entire pork shoulders meant to be devoured between four or more diners.

“We noticed at Oak, so many people ordered shared plates, and then they actually shared them,” said Dayton, standing beside the black bar that flanks one side of the room. “And I’ve been shocked at how much we are selling the large plates” at Oak, he said. By large plates, he means things like the 56-ounce pork shoulder, which has made appearances on the Oak menu, and the 34-ounce ribeye, that the Boulder restaurant is serving now.

Bryan Dayton, co-owner of Oak at Fourteenth in Boulder and the upcoming Acorn restaurant at the Source in Denver’s River North Neighborhood, is smiling even wider these days, as he starts planning for the new place. (Cyrus McCrimmon)

Oak at Fourteenth has wowed Boulderites since its second incarnation opened a year ago (its first incarnation lasted only months before a fire in March of 2011 shut it down for nine months). And sometime next year lucky Denverites will also have a restaurant from the team of Bryan Dayton and Steven Redzikowski. The guys plan to open Acorn in the Source, a 26,000-square-foot indoor Euro-style marketplace in the River North neighborhood. Dayton said they are hoping to open the place next summer, when the Source opens.

“I think it’s an amazing space,” said Dayton on the phone Thursday. “It fits our space. It seems crazy to be working on another restaurant already, but I just couldn’t pass this up. The whole thing felt really good.”

The restaurant’s name is a play on its relationship to the Boulder restaurant: Acorn will be smaller than Oak.